ARTICLES ABOUT COMPANIES BY DATE - PAGE 5

Aqua Sphere CEO Don Rockwell says he had no idea that Michael Phelps , the most decorated Olympic athlete of all time, would come out of retirement when the swimming equipment manufacturer sought earlier this year to partner with him. Talk about added value. "We would have been happy to have him" even if Phelps had not created a massive buzz in the sport by returning to competitive swimming, Rockwell said Tuesday. Phelps will compete in the U.S. Swimming Championships beginning Wednesday in Irvine, Calif.

Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. had a $3.8 billion economic impact on the Baltimore region last year, according to a study conducted for the utility. The report, prepared by the Economic Alliance of Greater Baltimore Foundation, said BGE supported nearly 8,700 jobs last year. That includes 3,035 people directly employed by the company, jobs at contractors and the ripple effect of both groups spending their paychecks. The Economic Alliance said BGE's economic impact was on par with the effect of some entire industries, such as computer systems and design services.

AirMall, which operates stores and restaurants at BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport, has been sold to a German airport-management company. New-York based private equity firm Prospect Capital Corp. sold Airmall and its parent company, AMU Holdings Inc., to Frankfurt-based Fraport AG for an unspecified amount. The deal took effect Friday, according to Fraport. Prospect Capital declined to comment, but in a statement said it had a 16.7 percent internal rate of return on its investment.

Anne Arundel County Police are searching for a man they say has posed as a worker for a local water company in order to burglarize homes. Police responded Friday morning to the 200 block of Hammonds Ferry Road in Linthicum where a woman said that she was approached by man who said he worked for a local water company and was investigating a water leak. He followed her into her home, and a few minutes after he left, the victim noticed some of her personal property was missing, police said in a release.

Public health officials have just one tactic to battle the unrelenting Ebola virus outbreak in West Africa - quarantine - but as the disease continues to spread, scientists in Maryland are among those close to discovering other weapons. Baltimore companies Profectus BioSciences and Paragon Bioservices, as well as researchers at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick in Frederick and the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, have been part of efforts that have shown a handful of Ebola vaccine candidates are effective in monkeys.

"You shouldn't get to call yourself an American company only when you want a handout from the American taxpayers," President Obama said last week. He was referring to American corporations now busily acquiring foreign companies in order to become non-American, thereby reducing their U.S. tax bills. But the president might as well have been talking about all large American multinationals. Only about a fifth of IBM's worldwide employees are American, for example, and only 40 percent of GE's.

Student debt has grown to over $1 trillion in the United States and is continuing to climb. In fact, seven out of 10 undergraduates graduated with some form of student debt in 2012. Such enormous debt is likely to trigger another financial crisis as young adults and recent graduates struggle to pay back their loans. The federal, state and local governments have taken a number of steps to provide aid in the form of scholarships, grants, loans and repayment assistance programs. In Maryland, for example, the state's Janet L. Hoffman Loan Assistance Repayment Program provides loan repayment assistance for graduates working in high needs areas in targeted fields such as medicine, education and law. In Fiscal Year 2013, 193 awards were made through that program; loan repayments totaled more than $1.2 million, with an average award of roughly $6,400 per recipient.

As The Baltimore Sun investigated years of financial and regulatory problems surrounding LifeLine, a Maryland company that operated group homes for disabled adults and children, requests for comment went out to the five people listed as members of its board of directors. That produced some unusual responses. Banker Anthony T. Carpenter was listed as heading the board, according to LifeLine's December relicensing application, which The Sun obtained through a Public Information Act request.

The nightclub insurer promised to fight for its clients - its promotional material shows a man socked in the face with a boxing glove. But founder Jeffrey B. Cohen fights everything. He went after competitors, clients, former employees and even neighbors, filing dozens of lawsuits around the country. The Reisterstown man once sought a restraining order to keep a rival company from attending an adult industry convention. Now Cohen, 39, faces the biggest fight of his life - his company, Indemnity Insurance Corp., was seized by regulators, and federal agents said in court documents that he appears to have been plotting to attack a judge.

Gilbert and Sullivan connoisseurs hold "The Gondoliers" in high regard. Sullivan's music is first-rate, filled with enough melodic invention to fuel two operettas. And if Gilbert hadn't already done so much with switched identities and contralto-types imparting secrets in the last scene, his libretto would be considered a decidedly original, clever little masterpiece. Young Victorian Theatre Company's production of "The Gondoliers," which closes this weekend at Roland Park Country School, provides a mostly satisfying celebration of the work's many qualities.